High life
Gstaad Mercedes Benz heir Mick Flick and I have been friends for more than half a century. We both married…
Crude mittens
Let me give you a free piece of relationship advice: just break up. If it’s more work than pleasure, if…
In the heart of the night
They rather like bad boys, the French. Louis-Ferdinand Céline (1894-1961) is one, in a tradition that stretches from François Villon…
Could you live without sex or the Tories?
In idle chatter the other evening, somebody pooh-poohed champagne. He was a brave soul because in certain circles — and…
Boris is in dangerous territory
The announcement of a tax increase for both workers and employers to fund more spending on health and social care…
TB or not TB
In Competition No. 3215, you were -invited to supply a poem about Geronimo the alpaca. The camelid’s fate was finally…
Letter from Kabul
The Taliban Cultural Commission sounds a contradiction in terms but for all foreign journalists it’s the first stop in the…
Solution to 2520: 5 4 3 2 1
The unclued lights are the names of the six principal presenters of COUNTDOWN (hence 5 4 3 2 1 as…
An odd, unsettled time
The word ‘magisterial’ consistently attaches itself to the work of David Kynaston. His eye-wateringly exhaustive four-volume history of the Old…
Eavesdropping on history
The famous photographic portrait by Karsh of Winston Churchill as wartime prime minster personifies heroic defiance and grim determination. His…
Root cause
A ‘State of the World’ report warns that a third of the world’s wild tree species are threatened with extinction.…
2523: Monstrous regiment
The unclued Across lights are of a kind when preceded by one word, as are the unclued Down lights (one…
Puzzle no. 670
White to play. Harvey–Roberson, Northumbria Masters 2021. Black’s last move, 37…Kf7-e7 looked plausible, but walked into a clever tactic. What…
Always entertaining
It is often said that the best political diaries are written by those who dwell in the foothills of power.…
Cherry clafoutis
My daydreams at the moment follow a predictable theme. I am on holiday somewhere balmy, with a carafe of cold…
Titles bonanza
At the beginning of August, seeing his outstanding performance at the Fide World Cup in Sochi, I wrote that Ravi…
Life, love and alienation
The millennial generation of Irish novelists lays great store by loving relationships. One of the encomia on the cover of…
Afghanistan’s lost hope
Ahmed Shah Massoud was described as ‘the Afghan who won the Cold War’. While famous in France (he was educated…
Seeing red
After leaving college more than two decades ago, Evan Osnos landed a job on the Exponent Telegram, one of two…
Addicted to love
Ruth, the narrator of Susie Boyt’s seventh novel, is both the child of a single mother and a single mother…
